Scar
by Avelynn Tame
Summary: The Doctor's observation skills dredge up old memories for Rose.


Title: Scar

Summary: The Doctor's observation skills dredge up old memories for Rose.

Author's Notes: I have such a _thing_ for battle wounds. Give me a scarred man any day.

* * *

It happened because of her outfit.

Really, she thought, the t-shirt was a little bit too small these days. Had a tendency to ride up, in fact, as it had done today, when she was reaching up to push a button on the console.

"What's that?" the Doctor asked, frowning.

"What's what?"

"That." And he pointed to her midriff.

She looked down and couldn't see anything unusual. "What?"

He tutted in exasperation and marched over. "That!" He poked a thin white scar that curved from her belly button across her abdomen to her hip.

"Oh. Stretch mark," she lied smoothly.

He raised an eyebrow. "Odd shape for a stretch mark," he commented. "Odd _look_ for a stretch mark."

She found that she couldn't quite meet his eyes, and focused instead on the console with all its interesting flashing lights. "Well, it's still a stretch mark."

To his credit, he didn't push it, but she saw him watching her carefully for a while after that, and occasionally casting a stern frown at that scar, as if he could somehow find out the truth by looking at it for long enough.

Eventually she got sick of it. He knew almost everything else about her – he might as well know this. "Fine," she said. "It's not a stretch mark."

Considering that it had been at least half an hour since their previous conversation, he picked it up remarkably well. "I thought as much. What is it? Looks like you were on the business end of a scalpel, or something."

"A knife, actually." She stared fixedly at a small stain on her jeans.

There was a heavy pause. When he finally spoke, there was something odd in his voice; she couldn't put her finger on what it was. "You got stabbed?"

"Mm-hmm." She started scraping at the stain with a fingernail. If it was baked bean juice, it might come out.

"By who?"

"Boyfriend," she replied absently.

There was a heavy clunk and she looked up to see that he'd knocked his chair over. "Mickey?" he said, aghast.

She rolled her eyes. "No, not _Mickey_. Christ. As if. No, it was Jimmy Stones."

"I see," he said tightly. "And… he stabbed you."

"Yup." The stain wasn't shifting. "He was a bit violent."

"Were you OK?"

She looked up again, because this time his voice had been just that bit… well, _smaller_. Almost childlike. "Yeah," she said softly. "Yeah, I was fine. As you see."

He was silent for a while, thinking it over.

She decided that she wasn't altogether comfortable with how worried he looked. "I met him when I was doing my GCSEs," she began conversationally. "He was a bit older – nineteen, nearly twenty. He was in a band." She snorted. "Not a very good one, but I didn't think that at the time. They practised on the estate, that's how we met. I really liked him, and everything He persuaded me to drop out of school, said I didn't need A levels to get by in life. So I did. Shows what an idiot I was."

She shook her head in disbelief. "But I think he got bored of me, or something, cos he started shouting at me all the time, for the slightest thing. Even hit me a couple of times – just little hits," she added hastily, "nothing drastic. And when I tried to break up with him, he took it badly… dunno why, if he was bored of me… Anyway, that was when he stabbed me."

She glanced up to see if he was listening, and noted with alarm that he had his head in his hands. "What's wrong?"

He waved a hand at her. "Nothing. Just… go on. Did you go to the police?"

She grimaced. "No. And don't shout at me like everyone else did – he had friends on the estate who'd have made our lives hell, and it wasn't just me I had to think of, it was mum too. So we told him to stay away from us, and he did." She pulled her t-shirt up. "Look, you can barely see the scar now. Anyway, I know for a fact that he got done for robbery a year after we broke up, so he did time for something, at least."

He shook his head. "You could have _died_."

"Well, I lost a lot of blood, but I got taken to hospital, didn't I? They took care of me. They put the siren on in the ambulance and everything – a load of fuss, just for little me."

Unsurprisingly, he wasn't smiling. "If you'd died," he said slowly, "we'd never have met."

She rolled her eyes again. "If I hadn't met Jimmy I'd have stayed in school, done A levels, got a better job and then never met you anyway. You can't tell how things will work out."

She got up and went over to him. "If I could do it again," she said softly, taking his hand, "I'd get stabbed if it meant meeting you. You know I would."

He stared at her hand in his. Kissed it once. "I know you would," he said. "I know."

She looked at her watch – late. "Bedtime," she declared. "And no thinking on it, you hear me?"

He gave her a wan smile, but she could feel his eyes on her as she walked away.

* * *

She wouldn't raise the issue again, and not just because it clearly distressed him.

She wouldn't bring up the fact that during the night she felt the TARDIS move through space and time, even though he wasn't supposed to go on his own adventures and leave her alone.

Because she'd been thinking, and she remembered something – whether it was something she'd always been able to remember or not, she didn't know. But thinking back on that time – the hazy, fear-filled twelve hours after Jimmy got a funny look in his eye and lunged at her… being in the ambulance, then in Casualty, then on an operating table, then drugged in a bed… She'd drifted in and out of consciousness, and years later, deep in her mind, buried under many other experiences, Rose had the memory of seeing a man hovering in the doorway of her room… a man wearing an old leather jacket.

In the few seconds before her sedatives and painkillers claimed her again, she'd seen a tiny sliver of light glistening on his cheek and known that he was crying.

* * *

More author's notes: Jillybean, you've been medically drugged, right? Can you tell me if Rose would have been able to tell whether or not he was wearing a leather jacket in her state? Just a minor worry that cropped up while I was typing this… 


End file.
